Trailer on the beach- bad idea?

Kelpie

Kelpie

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Maybe this question depends on the beach itself, how soft the sand is, etc.
If using a normal road trailer, how heavy could your trailer+boat get before it became unfeasible to launch off a beach? Obviously people do this with small boats all the time.
What I have in mind is that the towing vehicle would remain on the hard, with a winch line to the trailer to get it off the beach- thus avoiding the risk of bogging down driving wheels in the sand.

Would be curious to know if many people have done something like this.
 
When crossing sand it's usually the driving rather than the rolling wheels which dig in.
Clearly the distance can't be so great if you can get a winch line across it.
Radial tyres can be let down quite a bit to increase the section.
How will you get the trailer over the sand to the boat?
 
I'd imagine the unladen trailer could be pushed down towards the water by hand. It's got the slight slope of the beach to help it, after all.
I wonder, is there a scientific way of working out how much weight you can place on the wheels before they are at risk of sinking in?
 
A calculation factor will be the sand type in its dry condition. The pure load will not be an issue. A driven wheel tends to through the sand out behind it and dig the wheel in. A proper sand tyre has no cross tread and so just rolls over the surface.
If you are on site you can get an idea ( sort of scientific!!) by standing on a bit of wood which has the same ratio (sectional area to your weight as the boat has on on the tyres sectiona area. It will probably just compact the surface by a small amount.
 
Should also consider the dunking of the trailer wheels in salt water; access to the trailer when its submerged; size of boat - your Vega??
The Lewis beach sand is quite firm in my experience - driven cars on several beaches - but not sure what its like when covered in water !!
 
Robwhelton said:
I'd imagine the unladen trailer could be pushed down towards the water by hand. It's got the slight slope of the beach to help it, after all.
I wonder, is there a scientific way of working out how much weight you can place on the wheels before they are at risk of sinking in?
Click to expand...

The tyres are the clue - if you Google around 'balloon tyres' etc., you'll see some examples of proven systems.

Launching off a beach can be quite hairy if there's any life in the water - you need to be pretty fit for those games !

The cleverest idea I've ever seen for moving a boat over soft sand is to use planks of wood (3 or 4), with rollers fitted to their upper surfaces. You just keep laying the last plank in front of the boat, pretty much as they did back in Egyptian times...
 
it really is down to the variables - in principle it can be fine

used to launch an 950 kg rig on 2 wheel trailer with a 4x4

key issue often turned out to be the trailer wheels when under load and with water movement - they could sink in some types of sand very quickly!

you will need well greased brake cables, fitted with grease nipples and frequently topped up.

whilst you can wash brake linings in fresh water, this really doesn't stop them rotting pretty quickly - and pressurised fresh water isn't always consistent with open beach launches!

wheel bearings are a subject in themselves - personally I never had a problem, but then again I never launched with hot hubs.
 
For many years we launched and recovered our Parker 275 on a sandy beach in Stonehaven harbour. The trailer was a 4 wheeled yard trailer, with steerable front wheels, nor brakes, no suspension. The beach is normally quite firm and you can drive car or Land Rover on it no problem.
Launching was never a problem; roll the boat down the beach and get the boat as far in as possible, then wait for the tide to lift the boat off, if you didn’t get it in far enough. Because there was no weight on the trailer, recovering the trailer was easy, just hitch up a Land Rover and pull.
Recovering the boat was far more difficult, we’d float the boat on and secure it fore and aft, but you really had to tighten the ropes up, because when you start moving the trailer the boat tends to stay where it is, effectively moving the boat further back on the trailer than you’d like it. Initially the boat and trailer combination moves OK, then as the weight comes on the wheels, the wheels tend to sink in. At this point you have to keep moving, if you stop the wheels just sink into the sand. This because the sand is very fluid in the shallow water, caused by the wavelets stirring everything up. The sand can be quite firm in deeper water and where it’s dry, but seems to act like quicksand at the waters edge.
 
Thanks for all the input.
Looks like it is a matter to be treated with some caution.
I am fortunate in that the site I have in mind does have access to a tap, so hosing down the trailer shouldn't be a problem. The distance across the sand is on the order of ~30m. I was thinking that a set of railway sleepers could be useful if the sand proved too soft?
I have this launch/recovery in mind for a once per year thing, so I would be quite happy to let the tide do some of the work, and to wait for completely flat water conditions.
All hypothetical at the moment... if it looks like a silly idea there are slipways and cranes I suppose...
 
Last point!! Forget railway sleepers, far too heavy, just light ply will spread the load ok. regarding scour its really the bit where the waves break and run back where the problem really occurs. If you are rolling when you go through that bit yopu should be ok!!
 
One of the places I used to visit for regattas with the laser was a popular starting point for divers and several companies lauched their quite big ribs from road trailers off the beach using relatively normal 4X4snon an almost daily basis in the season. On that basis I suspect with suitable sand your plan is feasable.
 
We launch/recover our Seacracker 33 off a beach each season, its about 5 tons + trailer weight. It is a stoney beach but the launch site where the beach is low enough to launch the boat is sandy. Doesnt sink in at all. The trailer used to just have 4 landrover tyres on it, now the new one is two old farm trailer axles with the tyres for going through the fields.
Our 4x4 for ranger could manage it no problem except for where it goes down the ramp, as its not got the turning circle, to get the trailer round quick enough on the single track road so instead we give the local farmer a bottle of whisky for a shot of his tractor. If the ramp was wider and there was more area for the ranger to turn, it would have the power to get it up/down the beach easily in my opinion. Considering our old e reg 2.0 petrol nissan pickup could move the boat i cant see a modern 4x4 struggling.
 
Don’t be put off!! We launched and recovered our Parker 275 every year for 13 years; we occasionally got stuck, in the soft sand at the water’s edge. I found old rubber backed carpet runners, the sort of things you can buy in a DIY store for a few pounds, placed just in front of the trailer wheels did the trick of spreading the load if we got stuck, the same idea as plywood, but they don’t float, and using a Land Rover in 4 wheel drive, low ratio 1st gear, with limited slip diff, always got us out, eventually. Note I usually hired a Land Rover to recover the boat, didn’t want to burn the clutch of a borrowed one.
 
Many years ago I used to launch and recover a 15ft outboard runabout on a shingle beach on Loch Sunart, at the beginning and end of the season, using a slightly undersized road-trailer and a landrover.

Usually it was fine, but one autumn all did not go smoothly ...

First of all the engine wouldn't start, and when it did it only ran on one of the two cylinders and pushed the boat along very slowly. As a result, I was much later than planned getting to the haul-out site, it was raining and the light was starting to fade. I manoeuvred the boat on to the trailer without too much difficulty, but had great difficulty in pulling it up the beach. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, during which the landrover made quite deep ruts in the shingle, I decided to uncouple the trailer, move the landrover onto firmer ground and use a rope between the towbar and the trailer. When I tried to put this into practice I discovered that the landrover would not even pull itself up the beach and there seemed to be no drive to the rear wheels. By now it was completely dark, and did I mention that the tide was coming in?

By the time someone else with a landrover came to my aid the water was lapping up to my front wheels, but by staying on firm ground and using a towrope he was able to pull my vehicle and the boat and trailer above the high-water mark, where we left them overnight.

Investigation in daylight disclosed that the boat was much heavier than usual because a crack in the hull had allowed the space between the inner and outer skins to fill up with water, one of the trailer wheels had become stuck behind a small rock, and in the process of trying to pull it free I had broken a rear half-shaft on the landrover (so no drive to the rear wheels).

The moral of this story is that operations that are straightforward enough when everything works as it should can become difficult or impossible when things go wrong, so consider what might happen and have contingency plans.
 
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